soup

As promised, today I present to you one of my favorite to-go lunches/dinners: Instant Noodle Soup! Whaaaa!! It’s a dream come true, or at least for me. I used to love instant noodle soup when I was younger, it was salty, it was warm and it was super quick — no prepping or cutting of vegetables involved, just pouring in boiling water and wait 3 minutes (which was the hardest part!) and then you’d have this delicious bowl of salty soup with teeny tiny chunks of veggies and lots of noodles.

Of course, that’s not really healthy, and most of those instant noodle soups have extremely high sodium levels and actually little ingredients that were nutritious or had any significant value of vitamins and minerals.

Most bouillon powders or stock cubes are chock full of additives, flavor enhancers, sugar, salt and other weird things that you don’t actually need. Although using stock cubes is an easy way to e.g. give your soups extra flavor, it can also give you all those things that you would probably prefer not ingesting. Therefore I went out onto the internet to see what alternatives there are.

To those of you that don’t know what Harissa is, don’t worry, until two years ago I didn’t know either, but now I adore it! Harissa is a North-African/Middle Eastern sauce made from roasted bell peppers, red chillies, garlic and spices. Basically it is just Sriracha sauce, African/Middle Eastern style. Ever since I saw this recipe from Tieghan from Half Baked Harvest I’ve been wanting to make it at home too, but sometimes our “to-make wish list” just gets too long. I’m guessing basically everybody with Pinterest has that nowadays lol #toomuchinspiration

With my trip to Thailand in mind, I recently started to look more into Asian style food and recipes, because I’m actually not that familiar with the Asian kitchen! Yes, I love sushi and I’ve made some Indian curries a long time ago, but other than that I’m absolutely clueless on which spices to use, what herbs, what produce, what kinds of cooking methods, etc etc.

I don’t know what happened, but lately I’m SO into all things Italian! Example 1, 2 and 3.

For some reason, I’ve never really understood the Italian food crazy. I mean yeah, I like pizza and pasta, and even tiramisu, but ehm yeah, it’s not that special?! Well, I’ve totally changed my mind! Before starting this food blog, I was already into delicious food, and as a kid I used to bake a lot, but only when I started That Healthy Kitchen I started realizing the impact that good quality ingredients truly have on your food. I mean it when I say that a good quality ingredient can take a dish from okay to wow! And that, my friends, is exactly what Italian food is about: easy, simple recipes that become extraordinary by using high quality ingredients.

The weather here in the Netherlands has been horrible to say the least for the last couple days, and those grey-ish days always make me want to crawl into bed with a good cuppa soup and a good book or my current fave series.

If you are like me, and are blessed with enormous numbers of zucchinis every summer, this is a great recipe to have in your repertoire to use up that huge summer yield. Zucchinis are a perfect example of summer vegetables, with a harvest peak in July. As they tend to grow very vast, you’ll probably harvest them all around the same time, meaning that you will have a lot of zucchinis at the same time. From experience I’ve learned that they don’t really tend to freeze well, it is best to use them as soon as possible, and freeze the final product, such as this wonderful soup.

I love making big batches of food to eat throughout the week for lunch and/or dinner and this delicious soup is perfect for just that. Who else loves food prepping? Personally, I think it is a great solution to avoid having to cook each and every day, especially if you don’t have the time for that.

I'm Emma: student, foodie and blogger enthusiast. I live in the Netherlands, and I love everything food related. The kitchen is my happy place. I hope I can inspire you to live a healthy & happy life. Some of my favourite things include nature, dogs and seasonal fruit.
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